One of the more interesting semiconductor success stories is Apple and how they transformed from a struggling computer company to a dominant chip maker. We covered this story in quite a bit of detail in our book “Mobile Unleashed” in Chapter 7 “From Cupertino” but the short answer to how they did it is: Outsourced Operations.
Apple’s… Read More
Sometimes the hardest thing about bringing a new idea to fruition is overcoming the inertia to get started with a proof-of-concept. You must be able to put together enough parts of the solution to prove to those controlling budgets that an idea has merit and is worth taking to the next level. It’s a bit of a chick-vs-egg scenario as … Read More
As the percentage of pre-configured IP increases in semiconductors, so design teams are able to reduce design cycle times. But one of the challenges for design teams is the inability to quickly and easily find IP because it’s incorrectly classified, sat in a designer’s home directory, or it’s been put into the ‘repository’ by an… Read More
In college I took courses in physics, calculus, chemistry and electronics on my way to earn a BSEE degree, then did an 8 year stint as a circuit designer, working at the transistor level and interacting with fab and test engineers. My next adventure was working at EDA companies in a variety of roles. As a circuit designer I knew that … Read More
When we talk about the promise of ADAS and autonomous cars then along the way we also hear about this functional safety standard called ISO 26262 which semiconductor companies all pay close attention to. I recently learned about a new conference called Semiconductors ISO 26262, scheduled for December 5-7 in Munich, Germany. The… Read More
NetSpeed Systems is known for their network-on-chip (NoC) IP that enables complex heterogeneous SoC architectures. NetSpeed IP supports both non-coherent and coherent memory and I/O schemes as well as configurable, customized last level cache optimization through their Orion, Gemini and Pegasus IP respectively. They are… Read More
You don’t shower only before you have to go to an important meeting (teenagers excepted). Surgical teams go further, demanding a strict regimen of hygiene be followed before anyone is allowed into an operating room. Yet we tend to assume that libraries and physical IP (analog, memories, other physical blocks) are checked and pronounced… Read More
Last month I did an article about Intrinsix and their Ultra-Low Power Security IP for the Internet-of-Things (IoT). As a follow up to that article, I was told by one of my colleagues that the article didn’t make sense to him. The sticking point for him, and perhaps others (and that’s why I’m writing this article) is that he couldn’t … Read More
As chips for any design are fabricated, it turns out that no two are the exactly the same. This is both a blessing and a curse. Current silicon fabrication technology is amazingly good at controlling factors that affect chip to chip uniformity. Nevertheless, each chip has different characteristics. The most extreme case of happens… Read More
For those of you who missed the NetSpeed Systems, Imagination Technologies webinar, “Alexa, can you help me build a better SoC”, you’ll be happy to hear that the session was recorded and can still be viewed (see link at the bottom of this page). I’ll warn you now however, that this was a high-bandwidth session packed with information,… Read More
